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A U.S. Space Program for Space Settlement

Al Globus

I. Introduction

Imagine a space program based on a vision of settlement, rather than exploration. A vision of billions ofpeople living in hundreds of thousands of orbital colonies serenely orbiting Earth, the planets and our Sun.The current vision is about putting small numbers of people very far away entirely at government expense.Space settlement is about putting very large numbers of people in space primarily at their own expense,and making sure its nice enough that they stay and raise the kids. While the current exploration vision isexpected to cost about $100 billion up to the first visit to the Moon, the settlement vision is many orders ofmagnitude more expensive, making government funding impossible. But government can play crucial role.

Specifically, perhaps we could use something close to the current NASA budget to stimulate much largerprivate investments. In this vision, government funds are devoted to prizes, test facilities and technologydevelopment, along with NASAs traditional science and aeronautic activities. Operations are left to theprivate sector.

Princeton physicist Gerard ONeill and others showed that orbital space colonies were physically possi-ble.1, 2 Dr. ONeills analysis suggested that lunar mines could supply the materials, the Sun could providethe energy, and that our technology had nearly reached the point where we could build orbital cities. Thesecities could be placed anywhere in the solar system, although beyond Mars nuclear power might need toreplace solar energy. Others have shown that asteroids may be superior to the Moon for materials3 andthat construction of orbital colonies is considerably easier than developing comparable Martian or Lunarcolonies.4 ONeill speculated that we would be well on the way to building orbital colonies by now. Wearent.

At the moment we dont even have a plan to settle the solar system. This paper is intended to be a first

step. The focus is on building the first orbital colony, then using the infrastructure developed along the wayto turn the crank over and over, building new land for Lifes expansion. To build the first colony, we leanheavily, although not exclusively, on prizes. Prizes have several excellent properties:

1. They are fixed cost. There are never any cost over-runs.

2. Funds are only expended for results, not failures.

3. Prizes can motivate large numbers of contestants. Even teams that fail provide valuable training tothe participants.

What is needed to get the first settlement built? Major development requirements include:

1. inexpensive launch

2. lunar and/or Near Earth Object (NEO) mining

3. mega-ton materials transport

4. in-orbit materials processing and manufacture

5. hundred megawatt scale in-space power generation

6. kilometer scale in-orbit constructionSan Jose State University Foundation

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American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics


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7. nearly-closed life support

We propose approaching each as follows:

1. inexpensive launch - to be catalyzed by prizes

2. lunar and/or Near Earth Object (NEO) mining - catalyzed by prizes

3. mega-ton materials transport - prizes

4. in-orbit materials processing and manufacture - prizes for ground work, with winners eligible for grantsto use Apollo materials and those provided by mining and transport prizes

5. hundred megawatt scale in-space power generation - prizes

6. kilometer scale in-orbit construction - very small prizes for simulated orbital construction in a NASAsupplied software environment

7. nearly-closed life support - grants for ground work and prizes for low-g in-space agriculture

Let us turn to a more detailed consideration.

II. Launch

Over the last 50 years a wide variety of launch vehicles have been developed up to and including the U.S.Space Shuttle, the most capable space vehicle to date. In spite of decades of development, Earth-to-Orbittransportation costs thousands of dollars per kilogram and suffers a catastrophic failure rate of a few percent.Worse, these figures have not improved with time. The Saturn V cost less, measured in man-hours per tonto LEO, than todays major launch vehicles5 and never suffered a catastrophic failure, although there weremany close calls.

It has been pointed out that aircraft developed much more rapidly in their first 40 years than launchvehicles have. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of aircraft flights occurred in those years, but wehave only launched a few thousand vehicles into space. To really improve launch vehicles, we need tensof thousands of launches per year, not dozens. The only market for humans-in-space capable of sustainingthousands of flights per year is tourism; but without major improvements in cost and safety, orbital tourismwill be limited to those wealthy enough to pay $20 million for a ride on the Russian Soyuz, and currentdevelopment plans do not promise major change.

All human-capable orbital vehicles to date have been developed as national projects by the U.S., Rus-sia/USSR, and now China. For sub-orbital vehicles the picture is quite different. Spurred by the $10 millionAnsari X-Prize, Scaled Composites, LLC built and flew SpaceShipOne into space twice in as many weeks.While Scaled Composites reportedly spent considerably more than the purse to win, other commercial dealsinvolving advertising and technology sales netted a small profit.6 As a direct result, Scaled is now developingSpaceShipTwo for Virgin Galactic. Virgin Galactic is building a space port in New Mexico and intends tofly tourists into space for a few hundred thousand dollars per trip within a few years, and there are a coupleof competitors. Not only did the X-Prize spur a promising effort to initiate a sub-orbital tourism industry,but over 20 teams competed for the X-Prize. Only Scaled won, but the other 20+ efforts provided trainingfor well over a hundred individuals in human space flight development.

If $10 million may have jump-started the sub-orbital tourism industry, what prize might do the same

for orbital flight? Orbital flight is far more difficult due to much higher v

, longer exposure to the spaceenvironment, and high-speed atmospheric reentry. Also, failure is common, particularly during the first fewlaunches of a new system. Only 5 of the first 9 Pegasus launches succeeded, 9 of 20 for Atlas, 3 of 5 forAriane, 9 of 18 for Proton, and 9 of 21 for Soyuz. Thus, one might expect orbital flight to require a muchlarger prize. Indeed, Bigalow Aerospace has offered a $50 million prize for private development of an orbitalvehicle,7 but this has not generated a level of effort comparable to that expended for the X-Prize. Not onlyis the prize money apparently insufficient, a differently structured prize may be needed.

The X-Prize was intended to provide a large fraction of the development cost in a lump sum, with the hopethat a derived vehicle could fly tourists for a profit. However, the lowest cost estimate to develop a Earth-to-LEO vehicle is $400 million for development and $20 million per four person flight, by Transformational

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level passengers $/passenger cost ($M) Max income (1st competitor) ($M)

1 10 25,000,000 250 175

2 10 20,000,000 450 315

3 10 15,000,000 600 420

4 10 10,000,000 700 490

5 10 5,000,000 750 525

6 20 2,000,000 790 5537 50 1,000,000 840 588

8 100 100,000 850 595

9 1,000 50,000 900 630

10 10,000 10,000 1,000 700

Table 1. Prize schedule based on t/Space pricing proposals. There are ten prize levels paid out for the first10-10,000 passengers launched (second column), subject to the condition that no competitor may collect morethan 70% of the prizes at any one level. Total cost is in the third column and maximum any one competitorcould gross in the fourth.

Space Corporation (t/Space), and this may be optimistic. If t/Space met their cost targets and recouped all

development costs from a prize, seats would still cost at least $5 million per passenger, which would continueto limit the market to a small number of extremely wealthy individuals. Furthermore, if all the prize moneyis expended on a few flights by a single entrant, there may be no competitive pressure to reduce prices tothe $10-50 thousand range believed necessary to make a vacation in space accessible to the mildly wealthy.

We propose avoiding these pitfalls with a series of prizes for successive launch of people into orbit. Thedollars-per-passenger ratio decreases as more and more passengers are flown; ending at the desired pricepoint. Initial prize sizes can be adjusted to provide a profit after reasonable results are achieved. Forexample, Table 1 illustrates prizes based on the t/Space cost claims. A company meeting these cost andperformance targets would be profitable after a few launches; and by the end of the program over eleventhousand people would have orbited Earth. Note that the total cost of all prizes is $1 billion, less than threemonths shuttle operations.

However, suppose a competitor hires desparate people to ride in unsafe ships? Some may be killed, buta profit could still be realized on the successful flights. Fortunately, theres a simple solution based on anold French law. Crawford Greenwalt, former President of Dupont, is quoted as saying My company hashad a safety program for 150 years. The program was instituted as a result of a French law requiring anexplosives manufacturer to live on the premises with his family. In the same vein, we propose requiring atleast one major investor, top executive, or senior engineer from the competitor be on each flight. Also, anycompetitor suffering loss of life should be barred from further competition. Extreme measures are necessarysince early fatalities could easily put space tourism back by decades.

There is at least one additional problem. A healthy market requires at least two, and preferably many,viable competitors. Limiting the prizes per company at each dollar-per-passenger level provides a mechanismto support multiple competitors. We suggest limiting any single competitor to no more than 70% of theprizes at any one level. This is enough to give a substantial advantage to the first winner, but leaves largesums for a second.

In nearly 50 years of space flight we have failed to lower the cost of transport to orbit or improve safety

to the point where substantial numbers of people will pay their own way. Contest driven development oflaunch vehicles has been successful for sub-orbital flight. Perhaps something similar will work for Earth toLEO transportation.

III. Mining and Materials Transport

We propose encouraging space mining and materials transport with prizes for Lunar and/or NEO mate-rials delivered to HEO (High Earth Orbit). HEO is chosen to avoid materials entering Earths atmosphere.As a very large quantity of materials are necessary, it is important to maintain large safety margins against

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level tons $/ton cost ($) total cost ($)

1 0.1 10,000,000,000 1,000,000,000 1,000,000,000

2 0.5 2,000,000,000 1,000,000,000 2,000,000,000

3 1 1,000,000,000 1,000,000,000 3,000,000,000

4 10 100,000,000 1,000,000,000 4,000,000,000

5 100 10,000,000 1,000,000,000 5,000,000,000

6 500 1,000,000 500,000,000 5,500,000,0007 1,000 500,000 500,000,000 6,000,000,000

8 5,000 100,000 500,000,000 6,500,000,000

9 10,000 50,000 500,000,000 7,000,000,000

10 50,000 10,000 500,000,000 7,500,000,000

11 100,000 1,000 100,000,000 7,600,000,000

12 500,000 100 50,000,000 7,650,000,000

13 1,000,000 10 10,000,000 7,660,000,000

Table 2. Prize schedule designed to bring bulk materials costs down to $10/ton to HEO.

any conceivable harm to Earth.The bulk of the materials needed for space settlement construction are for radiation protection. Conser-

vatively, approximately 10 tons of material are needed for each square meter of surface area,1 but almostany materials will do. This means we need several million tons for a colony of several thousand people.For example, the Kalpana One colony design for 5,000 residents requires approximately 15 million tons ofmaterial, or about three thousand tons per resident.8 If we assume that each resident can afford a few tensof thousand dollars for shielding costs, then a price point around $10 per ton is required. This establishes alow point, or prize for the last ton of material, in the prize schedule. Actually, a higher price point is viablebut it makes almost no difference to the prize systems total cost.

The high point, or prize for the first ton of material, is more difficult to determine. Ideally, a competitorshould make a profit after a reasonable amount of effort, but there are no data on the cost for returning extra-terrestrial materials to HEO. The Apollo program retrieved approximately 300 kg of lunar materials to Earth

at a cost of approximately $25 billion in 1960s dollars, or about $80 million per kilogram ($80 billion perton). However, the Apollo program was hardly optimized for bulk materials mining. Somewhat arbitrarily,we choose $10 billion per ton, about one-eighth the Apollo cost ignoring inflation (perhaps another factor of10), for the first 100 kg of materials returned from the lunar surface or an NEO.

A draft prize schedule based on these two extremes is found in Table 2. A total purse of a bit less than$8 billion, the equivalent of six months of NASAs budget, is allocated to deliver 1+ Mton to HEO. Thissupplies about seven percent of the bulk materials needed for the Kalpana One design. At the final pricepoint, bulk materials for subsequent copies of this 5,000 person colony should cost $30,000 per resident. Aswith the launch vehicle prize, no more than 70% of the prize money at any one level may be won by a singlecontestant organization, insuring that prize money will be available for at least two serious contenders. Inaddition, no more than 70% of the prize may be won by materials from a single source. This insures that atleast one NEO is used for materials; which is important because the Moon lacks carbon and nitrogen; andhas hydrogen in significant quantities only at the poles.

NASA is currently conducting a very productive search for NEOs. This search should be continuedand expanded, particularly to smaller bodies. Current funding is quite modest and could be substantiallyincreased without creating major budgetary problems. In particular, the ground based telescopes currentlyin use have great difficulty detecting NEOs inside the Earths orbit due to the glare of the sun. This could becorrected, to a great extent, by a small space telescope dedicated to NEO detection. By placing the mirrorsin a long tube such a telescope can point quite close to the Sun without ill effect.

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From To Length (time) Quantity (continuous power)

LEO LEO 1 day 10 watts

MEO LEO 1 week 100 watts

GEO LEO 1 month 1 kw

MEO Earth 3 months 10 kw

GEO Earth 6 months 100 kw

Lunar Orbit Moon 1 year 1 mwTable 3. Prize schedule designed to developed beamed space solar power for use throughout the Earth-Moonsystem. The first column is the location of the solar power satellite, the second column the location of thereceiving satellite. The third column is the length of time power must be supplied to win the prize, andthe last column is the minimum continuous power transmission needed to win. Prizes are awarded for everycombination consisting of one pair from the first two columns and one from each of the other columns.

IV. Materials Processing and Manufacture

NASA currently has a prize for materials processing of lunar regolith simulant. The MoonROx (MoonRegolith Oxygen) challenge will award $250,000 to the first team that can extract breathable oxygen fromsimulated lunar soil before the prize expires on June 1, 2008.9 As regolith simulant is quite inexpensive, this

prize system could be expanded to many other tasks. Teams that meet the challenge could then be eligiblefor grants including access to lunar materials returned by Apollo and meteorites found on Earth; extendingtheir techniques to more realistic materials. These materials are in too short supply to be made available tolarge numbers of contestants.

Similarly, the first materials returned to HEO by the mining prize system would be too valuable to bemade available to large numbers of contestants. Also, simply getting equipment to HEO is difficult andexpensive. Thus, materials from the mininig prize system should be used in a traditional NASA technologydevelopment program at first. If launch costs come down and the to quantity of materials increases a prizesystem may be feasible.

V. Space Solar Electric Power

Space solar power is too expensive for terrestrial applications in the near- and mid-term. Indeed, untilsolar power satellites can be built almost entirely from extraterrestrial materials it is hard to imagine com-petitively priced space solar power for Earth. However, power in orbit is extremely valuable. Solar powersatellites in high orbit, which will not decay for many centuries, could power LEO satellites, eliminatingthe drag extensive solar arrays cause and substantially reducing reaction mass for orbit maintenance. Also,lunar mines could benefit from solar power satellites to provide power during the lunar night, which couldbe used to keep equipment warm enough to survive the two week lunar darkness deep freeze.

Our draft prize system for space solar power is structured differently than the launch and materials prizes.We propose $10,000,000 prizes for each of 216 milestones defined by the end points of power transfer, thelength of time power transmission is maintained, and the quantity of power transmitted. For example, thefirst prize to be won would probably be beaming 10 watts of power between two LEO satellites for one day.There are six cases for each of category, so all combinations gives us 216 cases (6x6x6). This leads to a totalcost of $2.16 billion. Any given system may only win one of the prizes, and no firm may win two adjacent

prizes in the length-of-time dimension. This insures that many systems will be built and that there will beat least two prize-winning competitors. By the time all prizes are claimed, we will have the ability to beammegawatts of power to nearly any location in the Earth-Moon system. Table 3 contains potential contestdetails. This particular approach has an end point of $1.14/kw-hour, about ten times the cost of electricityfor the authors residence. While this is higher than desired, normal markets can be reasonably expected tokeep driving the cost down given adequate demand.

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VI. In-orbit Construction

In orbit construction will probably be a feature of later stages of space solar electric power prize winners.For colonies themselves, however, it makes little sense to start real in-space construction before launchcosts come down and substantial product flows are available from the materials processing and manufactureelement. The same is not the case for simulation.

Contests and very small prizes can work for in-space construction in software simulation. NASA coulddevelop an open source simulator and run the contests, but any reasonably credible and capable organization

could do it, given a small core of committed, and talented, programs and contest organizers. Since thecontestants need only a free development environment and an inexpensive personal computer, prizes can bequite small. Indeed, the RoboCup10 simulation league where fully autonomous simulated robotic soccerteams compete generates substantial participation with no monetary prizes at all. This is an element ofthe program could be executed by the National Space Society.

VII. Life Support

Sustainable colony life support can be simulated on the ground in closed chambers. For example, theBiosphere II project demonstrated closed life support system for eight people over 13 months in spite of anumber of serious mistakes. Ground based closed life support systems are difficult to encourage with prizesbecause each entrant must be monitored carefully for months or even years to prevent cheating. Thus,

ground based life support should be supported with a grant program rather than prizes. Even a few tens ofmillions of dollars a year would vastly increase the rate of progress in this arena.In contrast to ground based life support, in space life support is easier to encourage with prizes. For

example, if low-g agriculture is practical, then large mass savings in colony design are possible becauseagriculture can be conducted in the interior of a colony; requiring no hull space, and thus no additionalshielding (assuming artificial lighting). In addition, lower g levels will enable development of crop varietieswith smaller, weaker support tissue (trunks, branches, twige, etc.) that can therefor devote more energy tofood production. The Lewis One? and Kalpana One8 orbital colony designs take advantage of this. Sinceclosure is required for the survival any plants and animals grown in space, close monitoring to preventcheating is unnecessary.

We propose prizes of $100 million each for the first 10 food-crop plant species and the first four foodproducing animal species that are grown through one complete life cycle (e.g. seed to harvest) in spaceat between 1/6 and 1/3g. These are the lunar and martian levels respectively, both of which are easily

accessible in orbital colonies. To prove multi-generation survival, we somewhat arbitrarily propose prizes of$100 million each for the first 10 plant species and the first four animal species grown through two completelife cycles. As with the other prizes, no more than 70% of the prizes may be won by any one organization.If successful, this program will definitively prove that low-g agriculture is practical and cut the required sizeof orbital colonies by a large factor for a total cost of $2.8 billion plus administration costs.

VIII. Conclusions

We have presented a U.S. government space program designed to develop key technologies to enablelarge scale colonization of the solar system. The program depends on private sector development supportedby government funded prizes, test facilities, and technology development. This is intended to stay closeto the present NASA budget; achieving much more ambitious goals than the current exploration programby catalyzing private efforts, much as the $10 million Ansari X-Prize catalyzed much greater development

expenditures to achieve private sub-orbital flight.As the proposed program is much more ambitious, the total cost of all prizes is approximately $14

billion, which, adding substantial administrative costs, is about one years NASA budget. While there is noguarantee that these prizes will have the desired effect, prizes are only awarded for success. If the technologyis not developed, only administrative costs are incurred. While the size of these prizes is plausibly sufficient,doubling or tripling would not make a successful program excessively costly. Indeed, solar system colonizationis so beneficial even an actual cost ten times higher would be the deal of the millennium. What, exactly, arewe waiting for?

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References

1Johnson, R. and Holbrow, C., Space Settlements: A Design Study, Tech. Rep. SP-413, NASA, 1975.2ONeill, G. K., Space Resources and Space Settlements - NASA SP-428, NASA, 1977.3Lewis, J. S., Mining the Sky, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 1996.4Globus, A., Where Should We Build Space Colonies, 2005, Can be downloaded from

http://space.alglobus.net/Basics/where.html .5Wetz, J. R. and Larson, W. J., Reducing Space Mission Cost, Microcosm Press and Kluwer Academic Publishers, El

Segundo, California/Dordrecht/Boston/London, 1996.6

Rutan, B., public talk, .7Covault, C., Bigelows Gamble, September 2004, Can be downloaded from

http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0409/27bigelow/ .8Bajoria, A., Arora, N., and Globus, A., Kalpana One: A New Space Colony Design, 10th ASCE Aerospace Divsion

International Conference on Engineering, Construction and Operations in Challenging Environments, Houston, Texas, March2006.

9Braukus, M., Harrington, J. D., and Ellegood, E., NASA Announces New Centennial Challenge, 5 2005, Can be down-loaded from http://www1.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2005/may/HQ 05128 Centennial Challenge.html.

10RoboCup , Can be downloaded from http://www.robocup.org/.

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